lockwood and co♡ locklyle

16・❥・our cold maiden

Lucy♡

2179 words a/n two long chapters in a row. hopefully, you don't get bored🙈 p.s don't worry, more lockwood content at the end 😋

♩

Still shaking nothing reconciled

Like a sick child

Melancholia colliding out of mind

In a silver swirl, I take a lungful in ♬

Blow a fistful out if you could say you will

♩♬

ᴺᴼᵂ ᴾᴸᴬᵞᴵᴺᴳ: Sick child. Siouxsie and the Banshees

↻ ◁ II ▷ ↺

Chapter Sixteen. Our cold maiden

"Mother," I said sternly. It was less of a greeting and more of an acknowledgement.

"Which one of you is there? Come closer so I can see you."

I inched closer to her bedside. She was merely a thin figure swathed in a bundle of sheets. Gone was the portly woman I remembered, replaced now by a gaunt and sallow shell of the person she once was. She stared at me with hollow eyes, a flicker of recognition passing across her face before her look was replaced with one of satisfaction.

Her mouth twisted into some crumpled copy of a smile. "Lucy Joan Carlyle in the flesh. My how you've grown since I last saw you."

I nodded yet kept silent. What did she want me to say? 'I'm so happy to see you'? If there was one thing she taught me, it was never to lie.

"You look so much like me when I was a young girl," she continued.

"Perhaps that's why I never look in mirrors anymore," I murmured.

"What was that? Speak up, child. My hearing is failing."

I coughed lightly and rubbed my clammy palms against my jeans. The room was too warm and my jumper too tight. I felt constricted and unsteady. "Is there something you wish to say to me, Mother?" I asked after a moment of silence. "An apology perhaps?"

"Apology?" She attempted a laugh that only ended in a wracking cough. I feared she would cough up a lung and blame it on me. "My dear girl, you've always had a sharp tongue."

"You wished to reconcile, did you not? That's why you asked to see me."

"Is that what Mary wrote? I wasn't sure what she had said to get you to come, but I was certain you would listen to her. She was your favourite sister after all."

I stilled. "What are you saying?"

Mother's features contorted into a sneer. "It has been four years, Lucy. Four years since you left us with nothing. You were my only dependable source of income. The only one of us with strong senses and a talent that was worth something. A talent that you ran off with," she spat. "So where," she said, her voice dangerously low. "Is my apology."

I had to grip the wall behind me to keep myself upright. I felt as if I had been punched in the stomach. "Is that all I ever was to you? Something to make you money?"

She gazed at me with hardened eyes, not nodding but not bothering to deny my accusation either. "You abandoned us, Lucy. I've seen the newspaper articles. I know you are well off now."